Sir Clive Sinclair was in a foul mood as he marched into the Baron of Beef pub. Eyes blazing, he spied his rival and stalked across the crowded bar.

Then, to the amazement of drinkers, the inventor set about him with a rolled up newspaper, whacking his hapless victim around the head until he was forced to flee. Skirmishes continued in a nearby wine bar.

The set-to in Cambridge city centre between one of the nation’s great innovators and a man he regarded as an upstart was the culmination of a fierce battle for control of the lucrative home computer market.

Now, 25 years later, the rivalry between Sinclair and Christopher Curry, founder of Acorn Computers, is to be dramatised by the BBC.

The programme, Syntax Era, depicts a golden period when Britons were at the forefront of the race to put the first affordable computers into millions of homes.

Today Sir Clive, who was knighted for services to British industry, is known as much for his failures as his successes. He will forever be remembered as the man who tried to foist the Sinclair C5 on an unwilling British public. However, back then, Sir Clive was at the cutting edge of computer development.

Until the end of the Seventies, computers were seen as bulky, cumbersome machines that would only ever have a role in offices and were prohibitively expensive.

Sinclair, whose first successful venture had been a pocket calculator, changed all that when he unveiled his ZX80 computer in 1980.

Compared with what was on the market it was slimline and cheap, selling for under £100 when anything comparable cost five times more.

Working from his headquarters in Cambridge with a handful of staff, Sir Clive went head-to-head with the world’s electronics giants and left them with a bloody nose.

‘I’m proud. We pioneered low cost computing’

The ZX80 and its successors, including the Spectrum, were sensations and the money rolled in. In 1982 Sir Clive’s company made a profit of £8.5million and the following year one of his computers was the best-selling model in the United States.

As word got round that the computer revolution meant that children would be disadvantaged if they couldn’t use the machines, mums and dads sent off for Sinclair’s computers in droves.

Helping drive the early success of the company was Chris Curry, sales manager at Sinclair Radionics. In reality Curry, who’d begun selling hi-fis, was Sinclair’s trusted lieutenant, responsible for everything from packing products into boxes to placing adverts, dealing with technical queries from customers and even repairs.

In 1978, after a disagreement with Sinclair over the development of a new model, he’d quit to go it alone, founding Acorn Computers. It’s said the name was chosen because Curry wanted his company to appear before Apple, an American competitor, in the business directory.

His base was just down the road from his old boss’s, also in Cambridge, where other high-tech companies began to flourish, helped by the pool of bright young talent available at the university.

The US had Silicon Valley but the UK had Silicon Fen where Curry, who’d worked with Sinclair for 13 years, adopted his former boss’s successful model of selling computers by mail order.

Making computers became a cottage industry and the protagonists in the computer war would mingle in their favourite Cambridge pubs, swapping friendly banter. Sinclair would even pop into his rival’s office for a chat, according to former workers.

It soon became apparent, however, that one computer would become dominant and naturally, Sinclair and Curry were both aiming to be number one.

In the early Eighties, the BBC became aware of the revolution in computing and launched a campaign to put them into schools. It planned a series of educational programmes ex­plain­ing how to use the new technology. The broadcaster, sensing a huge untapped market, saw an opportunity to sell computers to schools to accompany the programme and invited companies to bid for the contract.

Sinclair, who was ahead in the race, assumed he’d get the job but, to his horror, the BBC chose an Acorn model, which became known as the BBC Microcomputer. With the BBC’s backing it was an overnight success and Acorn was swamped with orders.

That period was the boom time for UK computers. Curry at Acorn, with its new Atom computer, and Sinclair with his Spectrum, jockeyed for position. At first, relations remained cordial but then Sinclair took exception to an advertisement by Acorn, which suggested its computers were superior to those being manufactured by Sinclair.

Furious at his computer’s reliability being questioned it was then, in the build up to Christmas 1984, that Sir Clive squared up to Chris Curry in the Baron of Beef.

Sir Clive, who later apologised for losing his cool, recalls: “He’d slagged off my computer and I took exception to that. It was nothing too vigorous. I think he was pretty shame-faced but we soon patched things up and we remain friends. I’m not embarrassed about it.”

T he inventor admits he was also “pretty miffed” when he lost out to Acorn for the BBC deal. “At the time we were miles ahead of Acorn,” claims Sir Clive. “I don’t think the Acorn computer would have gone anywhere without the BBC ­tie-up.”

He says he’s relaxed about how he will be portrayed in the comedy drama, which will be screened this autumn. “It was a terrifically exciting time,” he explains. “I’m proud of what we achieved at Sinclair. We pioneered low-cost computing.”

Curry, now 63, said of the fight: “He was extremely aggressive and rude to me and he was calling me names. I tried to placate him but it was no good.”

The feuding pair eventually patched up their differences and Sinclair invited Curry to one of his New Year parties.

The BBC4 comedy drama which stars Martin Freeman of The Office as Curry, and Alex­ander Armstrong as Sinclair, is expected to depict the punch-up and promises an “affectionately comic” account. It will include archive footage from period shows such as John Craven’s Newsround to add a splash of realism.

Acorn’s BBC computers were a spectacular success, with more than one million sold worldwide but the company failed to cash in fully. A cheaper version was made specifically for the home market but too few were ready for the all-important Christmas rush that year.

By the time Curry’s company caught up with demand the boom was over, Acorn was left with a warehouse full of unsold computers and ran into financial problems. At one stage it was worth £135million but it was eventually rescued by an Italian company, which paid just a fraction of that amount in a take-over.

Curry is still based in Cambridgeshire, where he is now the chairman of GIS, a company that specialises in smart-card technology for transport.

Steve Furber, who helped design Acorn’s BBC Microcomputer, says: “It was a pretty exciting time and Acorn was a great place to work. I was in my late 20s then and I was the old guy in the team. Sir Clive may dispute it but there’s no doubt what we were making was better.”

Computer chip technology pioneered by Acorn is still being used today in mobile phones and music players, he says.

In those days, breakthroughs such as the BBC deal were celebrated with copious amounts of champagne.

Furber, who is now professor of computer engineering at Manchester University, didn’t witness the notorious pub fight but says: “I think you’ll find both of them are quite proud of it now. There was a recent reunion for Acorn workers and Chris referred to it.”

A n inventor at heart, Sinclair later misguidedly focused on his C5, which was supposed to revolutionise urban travel but was described by one critic as “a motorised coal scuttle”. It never caught on, costing him £7million, and he was forced to sell his home and his computer business.

Sir Clive says he has no regrets and persists with his latest invention, a folding bicycle called the A-bike. Now aged 68, he divides his time between an apartment overlooking Trafalgar Square, where he also has his office, and a modest research centre in Croydon, South London.

His personal life has been just as colourful as his business career and he recently became engaged to Angie Bowness, 32, a former lap dancer at Stringfellows nightclub in London. Sir Clive says they’ve not yet fixed a date for the wedding.

The inventor, who has three children and is divorced from his wife, had a brief relationship with Ms Bowness 11 years ago but when they split up she complained: “I like pop music like All Saints. All I could find in his flat were classical CDs. I like to watch TV but he prefers to read books.”

David Manners, who co-authored a book, Digerati Glitterati, about the early UK computer and technology boom, says both companies deserve their place in UK technology history.

“Until the late Seventies the market was dominated by big companies and Clive Sinclair and Chris Curry showed that one-man bands could be successful. Until then, computers were machines operated by men in white coats but they took the whole idea to the public. They were the first entrepreneurs. Clive Sinclair in particular captured the imagination, although they both produced very good computers.”

Ironically, although both Sir Clive and his rival Chris Curry enjoyed their moments of success, in the end American companies such as IBM and Apple overtook them both in the global computer race.

Ultimately, the battle of the Baron of Beef was for nothing.

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